'Oh,' Mary cried, as something dipped suddenly in the water near them.
'It was only a dabchick,' Rob guessed, looking over the rail.
'What is a dabchick?' asked Mary.
Rob did not tell her. She had not the least desire to know.
In the river, on the opposite side from where the Tawny Owl lay, a stream drowns itself. They had not known of its existence before, but it was roaring like a lasher to them now. Mary shuddered slightly, turning her face to the island, and Rob took a great breath as he looked at her. His hand held her brown sunshade that was ribbed with velvet, the sunshade with the preposterous handle that Mary held upside down. Other ladies carried their sunshades so, and Rob resented it. Her back was toward him, and he sat still, gazing at the loose blue jacket that only reached her waist. It was such a slender waist that Rob trembled for it.
The trees that hung over the house-boat were black, but the moon made a fairyland of the sward beyond. Mary could only see the island between heavy branches, but she looked straight before her until tears dimmed her eyes. Who would dare to seek the thoughts of a girl at such a moment? Rob moved nearer her. Her blue cap was tilted back, her chin rested on the rail. All that was good in him was astir when she turned and read his face.
'I think I shall go down now,' Mary said, becoming less pale as she spoke. Rob's eyes followed her as she moved toward the ladder.
'Not yet,' he called after her, and could say no more. It was always so when they were alone; and he made himself suffer for it afterwards.
Mary stood irresolutely at the top of the ladder. She would not turn back, but she did not descend. Mr. Meredith was fishing lazily from the lower deck, and there was a murmur of voices in the saloon. On the road running parallel to the river traps and men were shadows creeping along to Hampton. Lights were going out there. Mary looked up the stretch of water and sighed.
'Was there ever so beautiful a night?' she said.
'Yes,' said Rob, at her elbow, 'once at Dome Castle, the night I saw you first.'
'I don't remember,' said Mary hastily, but without going down the ladder.
'I might never have met you,' Rob continued grimly, 'if some man in Silchester had not murdered his wife.'
Mary started and looked up at him. Until she ceased to look he could not go on.
'The murder,' he explained, 'was of more importance than Colonel Abinger's dinner, and so I was sent to the castle. It is rather curious to trace these things back a step. The woman enraged her husband into striking her, because she had not prepared his supper. Instead of doing that she had been gossiping with a neighbour, who would not have had time for gossip had she not been laid up with a sprained ankle. It came out in the evidence that this woman had hurt herself by slipping on a marble, so that I might never have seen you had not two boys, whom neither of us ever heard of, challenged each other to a game at marbles.'
'It was stranger that we should meet again in London,' Mary said.
'No,' Rob answered, 'the way we met was strange, but I was expecting you.'
Mary pondered how she should take this, and then pretended not to hear it.
'Was it not rather The Scorn of Scorns that made us know each other?' she asked.
'I knew you after I read it a second time,' he said; 'I have got that copy of it still.'
'You said you had the card.'
'I have never been able to understand,' Rob answered, 'how I lost that card. But,' he added sharply, 'how do you know that I lost it?'
Mary glanced up again.
'I hate being asked questions, Mr. Angus,' she said sweetly.
'Do you remember,' Rob went on, 'saying in that book that men were not to be trusted until they reached their second childhood?'
'I don't know,' Mary replied, laughing, 'that they are to be trusted even then.'
'I should think,' said Rob, rather anxiously, 'that a woman might as well marry a man in his first childhood as in his second. Surely the golden mean——' Rob paused. He was just twenty-seven.
'We should strike the golden mean, you think?' asked Mary demurely. 'But you see it is of such short duration.'
After that there was such a long pause that Mary could easily have gone down the ladder had she wanted to do so.
'I am glad that you and Dick are such friends,' she said at last.
'Why?' asked Rob quickly.
'Oh, well,' said Mary.
'He has been the best friend I have ever made,' Rob continued warmly, 'though he says our only point in common is a hatred of rice pudding.'
'He told me,' said Mary, 'that you write on politics in the Wire.'
'I do a little now, but I have never met any one yet who admitted that he had read my articles. Even your brother won't go so far as that.'
'I have read several of them,' said Mary.
'Have you?' Rob exclaimed, like a big boy.
'Yes,' Mary answered severely; 'but I don't agree with them. I am a Conservative, you know.'
She pursed up her mouth complacently as she spoke, and Rob fell back a step to prevent his going a step closer. He could hear Mr. Meredith's line tearing the water. The boy on the next house-boat was baling the dingey, and whistling a doleful ditty between each canful.
'There will never be such a night again,' Rob said, in a melancholy voice. Then he waited for Mary to ask why, when he would have told her, but she did not ask.
'At least, not to me,' he continued, after a pause, 'for I am not likely to be here again. But there may be many such nights to you.'
Mary was unbuttoning her gloves and then buttoning them again. There is something uncanny about a woman who has a chance to speak and does not take it.
'I am glad to hear,' said Rob, 'that my being away will make no difference to you.'
A light was running along the road to Hampton Court, and Mary watched it.
'Are you glad?' asked Rob desperately.
'You said I was,' answered Mary, without turning her head. Dick was thrumming the banjo below. Her hand touched a camp-chair, and Rob put his over it. He would have liked to stand like that and talk about things in general now.
'Mary,' said Rob.
The boy ceased to whistle. All nature in that quarter was paralysed, except the tumble of water across the river. Mary withdrew her hand, but said nothing. Rob held his breath. He had not even the excuse of having spoken impulsively, for he had been meditating saying it for weeks.
By and by the world began to move again. The boy whistled. A swallow tried another twig. A moor-hen splashed in the river. They had thought it over, and meant to let it pass.
'Are you angry with me?' Rob asked.
Mary nodded her head, but did not speak. Suddenly Rob started.
'You are crying,' he said.
'No, I'm not,' said Mary, looking up now.
There was a strange light in her face that made Rob shake. He was so near her that his hands touched her jacket. At that moment there was a sound of feet on the plank that communicated between the Tawny Owl and the island, and Dick called out—
'You